March 25, 2008

Live from Austin - Carla Bozulich's Evangelista (mp3)

If you've listened to WFMU for any large chunk of time, chances are you've run into the recorded work of Carla Bozulich. Her 2006 album "Evangelista" ended up on a coupleofpeoples' Top 10 lists of 2006. She also played live on Brian's show that year, and her new album "Hello Voyager," recorded with her band Evangelista, is making its rounds on the 'FMU programming grid right now.

Now available to you, the patient blog-reading and listening public, is Evangelista's entire performance at the WFMU South By Southwest showcase on March 14th at Spiro's in Austin. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the band is used to playing in darkness, which made the pink-lit outdoor stage at Spiro's a bit of a change of pace for the band.

All of Carla's music is powerful and haunting, and that's especially true in her live performance. But a heavy dose of twisted humor shines through when she plays live that isn't totally apparent in her albums. She's constantly sporting a devilly grin and cracking half-jokes in between fits of all other kinds of emotion. It's a dark and strange ride - listen for all sorts of weird and fantastically played instrumentation: cymbals attached to a rubber strap and dropped, toy telephones being crooned into, cellos being beaten in submission, and the actual stage structure being used as a percussive element by the bandleader herself. Also, the Low cover, if you haven't heard it yet, is unmissable.

Comments

I'll state with no hesitation that Carla B is one of my all-time favorite artists. I can think of several pieces she's performed or been involved with that have moved me to tears... something that very rarely happens, so high praise indeed from me. Scarnella in particular remains a high point to my ears. There's a piece called "A New Song" that I can't seem to find online anymore (I saved it to my hard drive long ago)... beautiful, delicate, devastating... you might still be able to find it if you search for it, but it seems to have disappeared from her website.

Mind you, I don't like everything she's ever done, but that only confirms my opinion of her as an artist of range and depth. I'm not often in the mood for noisy improv, but when I am, Carla hits the spot most every time.